Or sign up for our mailing list, where we'll be announcing new artists and the launch of Gifpop!

THANK YOU! We will be adding Vine and Instagram video support to our feature list for Gifpop!

$15,000 - PERSONALIZED NOTES SUPPORT - REACHED!

THANK YOU! We're going to offer the ability to write a custom note on the back of each gif card! Give the gift of gif!

$25,000 - "GIFPOP THIS" WIDGET - REACHED!

AWESOME! When we launch the widget option, you'll be able to get in touch and get an embeddable Gifpop widget. Link it with a gif post and we'll be able to track orders through your widget, and send you a portion of the profits. This will allow you to sell your own work from your own site, which is going to be absolutely amazing!

$35,000 - BUSINESS CARD AND WEDDING INVITATION SETS - REACHED!

It's business time! We're going to offer custom sets of business cards and wedding invitation postcards at bulk prices, with the ability to upload your own unique design on the back!

Image by pixelfucks.com

Cool, but tell me more about Gifpop!

Hi! We're Rachel Binx and Sha Hwang, and we love animated gifs. We love them on reddit, we love them in the news, and we love all the beautifulgif art that's being made. We love how they capture small, wonderful, funny, or amazing moments and make them something we can share. And we love gifs so much, we're building Gifpop to take gifs out of the screen and into the real world.

Well, but, how?

We've been working over the past several months on a way to print animated gifs onto lenticular cards. Each sheet of lenticular film has many tiny lenses, which allow us to print around ten frames of animation onto small cards. It's been around since the 1940s, but has mostly been used for children's toys. But we think that gifs and lenticular printing are two simple, lo-fi technologies that were made for each other.

We've been doing tons of test prints with different materials and different types of film, and have started working with a lenticular manufacturer that will allow us to do custom prints. We've also been building out a website where you can upload a gif, select a portion to print, and order a gif card in a variety of sizes. We've been sharing and showing these gif cards among friends — it's been really fun, and addictive to play with. And now we're finally got everything in place to do our first big production run, and we need your help.

Awesome. What do you need?

We're hoping to raise enough money to put in a big production run order, pay for the costs of packaging, and finish the website. We'd love to be able to make Gifpop real so we can start making custom, physical gif cards for everyone, and in the process, bring a little bit of the magic and wonder of the internet into the real world.

Over the past few years, lots of talented artists and designers have been exploring animated gifs as a medium. So in addition to offering the ability to print your own favorite gifs, we're also excited about the opportunity to support the growing community of gif artists. As designers ourselves, we understand the constant struggle between creating work you're passionate about and paying the bills. So for our Kickstarter, we're working with three of our favorite artists on doing small runs of their work.

We're working with the incredible Mr. Div, the amazing 89-A, and the awesome Davidope. These artists are paving the way for incredible, haunting, and whimsical new forms and explorations, and we couldn't be prouder to be collaborating with them on Gifpop.

We see these artists as pioneers, and we are not interested in treating digital art as a second class citizen the way it often is in the art world. We're also not interested in the standard gallery model of revenue splitting. That's why most of our revenue from the art prints we will be selling will go directly back to the artists — we'd much, much rather artists profit from us than the other way around.

We'll say it again: Gifpop is a product, but it is also a provocation. We want to explore and build new avenues for digital artists to make a living, and we want to do this in public.

What do I get?

So. In backing this Kickstarter you'll not only support our dream of Gifpop, but you'll also be supporting the exciting community of artists exploring an emerging medium. And in return, we've got some pretty exciting rewards lined up.

Early Access

As a backer you will receive our deepest thanks, and we'll owe you a seriously hand-stinging high five. But you'll also receive early access to the Gifpop site. We'll listen to your feedback, you'll receive gif-ridden updates from us as we finish the site, and you'll be the first in line for ordering cards. But it gets even better from there!

Your Own Custom GIF Cards

If you back $12 or more, you'll not only receive early access, but you'll also be a part of our initial production run of Gifpop. You'll be able to send us your gif, edit the frames you want printed, and choose either a 3"x3", business card, or postcard sized gif card. For simplicity international backers will pay shipping later, and don't have to add any extra to their pledges now!

An early test with just two frames of travel photos

Artist Prints

A test print in action by Davidope

Some small, low resolution test prints of artist gifs.

At our highest reward tiers, you'll be a part of a special group of backers to receive prints from the three gif artists we are working with: Mr. Div, 89-A, and Davidope. Their work is amazing and we will be doing several test runs of different pieces of theirs to get the best quality prints. All artist prints will be offered on high quality 40 LPI lenticular sheets — they'll be gorgeous.

Gifs for Days

At the Gifs for Days reward tier, you'll be a part of the lucky club that gets 3"x3" artist gifs in the mail, once a month, for six whole months! We're working with 89-A, Mr. Div, Patakk, pixelfucks, hateplow, and lulinternet on bringing their gifs to life for this reward:

Donor Wall

And finally, in addition custom gif cards and artist prints, if you pledge $30 or more we'll include you on a big thank you wall on Gifpop! For $30 and up you'll get a 50px by 50px square on our wall of thanks to put any (appropriate) gif that you'd like, and have it link back to your own site. For $100 and up, you'll have a 100px by 100px space to flaunt your favorite gif!

Sweet. Wait, who are you?

Oh right! We're Rachel Binx and Sha Hwang, two designer/programmers who have recently moved out of San Francisco to New York. We love making tools on the internet that turn into physical things you can hold. Previously, we built the custom jewelry company Meshu, that allows people to make unique jewelry based on places they've been.

More about us:

Rachel (@rachelbinx) studied math and art history before discovering the world of data visualization. Before jumping into Meshu/Gifpop, Rachel worked at Stamen as a design technologist. There she worked on creating realtime data visualizations for clients such as MTV, Facebook, and Oprah. When not sitting in front of her computer, she likes to be out traveling the world, or at home hanging out with her cockatiel.

Sha (@shashashasha) studied and worked in architecture before falling into data visualization and the world of designing for the web. Sha also worked at Stamen, where he worked on projects for CNN, MTV, Adobe, and Flickr. After Stamen Sha cofounded a startup called Movity, which focused on data visualization and cities. Movity was acquired by Trulia, where Sha worked for the past two years building maps and visualizations. Now independent, Sha continues to explore the intersection of interaction, information, and fabrication.

Credits

We wouldn't have been able to get this far without the help of our friend Tess Aquarium, who has helped us level up our fulfillment skills. We also owe a lot to the talented Paul Trillo, whose inventive work and ideas inspired a lot of how we ended up shooting our own Kickstarter video. Our music in the video was from the lovely Podington Bear. And let's have another shout out to the amazing Mr. Div, 89-A, Davidope, Pixelfucks, lulinternet, Patakk, and Hateplow! They've all been so kind, and we deeply appreciate working with them on Gifpop. Finally, we'd also like to thank Golan Levin, who gave the world the phrase "not just a product, but a provocation" and whose work has been deeply influential to both of us.

Risks and challenges

Manufacturing is hard, and luckily we have found a local manufacturer that is flexible enough for us to do the custom printing that Gifpop relies on. If the scale of orders or quality of results becomes an issue we would need to switch manufacturers. Lucky for us, our manufacturer has years of experience working at much larger scales than we are aiming for with Gifpop, so we don't expect to encounter any problems.

Software engineering is also hard, and though we are skilled frontend developers (we live and breathe Javascript), we are not seasoned backend developers. Should the tools we build not scale or be poorly structured we would face delays in either hiring programmers to help or fixing things ourselves. On the other hand, we have many friends who are talented backend engineers who have been very supportive of us, and have been keeping us on track as we have built out the site.

Fulfillment, too, is often an invisible challenge many Kickstarters (and any company!) face. We do however have over a year of experience with fulfillment with our project Meshu, and have been working with the excellent Tess Aquarium to ship orders domestically and internationally. Shipping cards will be far easier than shipping boxes of jewelry, and so we are confident that we are up to the task.

Yes! If you back at a reward tier that includes multiple gif cards, you will be offered the option to create and receive any combination of gifs and sizes. For example: three gif cards that are all of the same gif in different sizes, or three cards that are all different gifs.

For reward tiers that include artist gifs, they will come in either 3x3 (GIFS FOR DAYS) or 8x8.

We're hoping so, but it's not finalized yet. We are currently doing test prints of various gifs of each artist, and will only select ones as rewards that we think meet our high expectations. If we sell out of $100/$120 tier artist gifs, we may offer more than one choice for each artist!

Yes! For simplicity international backers will pay shipping later, and don't have to add any extra to their pledges now. We expect international shipping to be relatively cheap, around $5-10, because we will be shipping flat envelopes, but it will vary by country.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $12 or more
About $12

THE LONE GIF — You'll receive early access as well as a gif of your choice printed on a card. We'll be offering your choice of a 3"x3", 5"x5", business card, or postcard size. (International shipping will be paid when you create your card. For 5x5 and postcard sizes please add $3)

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $30 or more
About $30

GIFT OF GIF — You'll receive early access as well as THREE GIF CARDS of your choice. They can be all the same to give to friends, or all different to hoard on your own! You'll also get a 50x50 space for a gif of your choice on our DONOR WALL.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $75 or more
About $75

GIFS FOR DAYS — You'll receive early access as well as ONE 3x3 ARTIST GIF CARD A MONTH FOR SIX MONTHS. This'll be great for surprising coworkers, friends, or just for a bit of cheer for yourself every month. You'll also get a 50x50 space for a gif of your choice on our DONOR WALL.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

GIFTASTIC — You'll receive early access, one custom gif card of your choice, as well as one 8"x8" art print of your choosing from MR. DIV, 89A, or DAVIDOPE. This is the first time these fantastic artists have had these gifs for sale, and you'll be supporting them directly to do more of what they love! You'll also get a 100x100 space for a gif of your choice on our DONOR WALL. Sweet!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

GIFTASTIC v.2 — You'll receive early access, one custom gif card of your choice, as well as one 8"x8" art print of your choosing from PATAKK or HATEPLOW. You'll be supporting them directly to do more of what they love, and you'll also get a 100x100 space for a gif of your choice on our DONOR WALL. Super!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

GIFTASTIC v.3 — You'll receive early access, one custom gif card of your choice, as well as one 8"x8" art print of your choosing from LULINTERNET or PIXELFUCKS. You'll be supporting them directly to do more of what they love, and you'll also get a 100x100 space for a gif of your choice on our DONOR WALL. Awesome!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $120 or more
About $120

GIFALICIOUS — You'll receive early access, THREE CUSTOM GIF CARDS of your choice, as well as one 8"x8" art print of your choosing from MR. DIV, 89A, or DAVIDOPE. This is the first time these fantastic artists have had these gifs for sale, and you'll be supporting them directly to do more of what they love! You'll also get a 100x100 space for a gif of your choice on our DONOR WALL. Epic!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $275 or more
About $275

THE GIF CONNOISSEUR — You'll receive early access, three custom gif cards, and ALL THREE 8"x8" ART PRINTS from MR. DIV, 89A, and DAVIDOPE. You'll have their personal thanks as well as three gorgeous lenticular gif cards from three of the most incredible gif artists. You'll also get a 100x100 space for a gif of your choice on our DONOR WALL. Amazing!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $400 or more
About $400

GIF TO KNOW US — You'll receive SIX GIF CARDS of your choice, a 100x100 space on the DONOR WALL, and if you're in New York, we will take you out to dinner! Or we can order you delivery and hang out on Skype. Or just Skype.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $600 or more
About $600

THE GIF GURU — You'll receive early access, three custom gif cards, and ALL SEVEN 8"x8" ART PRINTS from MR. DIV, 89A, DAVIDOPE, PATAKK, HATEPLOW, LULINTERNET, and PIXELFUCKS. Amaze your friends and family with your overwhelming love of gif. You'll also get a 100x100 space for a gif of your choice on our DONOR WALL. Out of this world!